The invention relates to a packaging machine, in particular for filling and sealing containers containing liquid pharmaceuticals. A packaging machine of this kind has a hoodlike insulator housing, which sealingly surrounds a machine plate of a machine stand, thus forming a sterile chamber in which the containers are filled with a product and then sealed. On its underside toward the machine stand, the insulator housing has an encompassing, inward-drawn edge, which with the interposition of a sealing element, such as silicone, rests with its full surface on the top side of the machine plate, on the peripheral regions thereof. To fix the insulator housing on the machine stand, threaded bolts are also disposed on the underside of the inward-drawn edge of the insulator housing; the bolts engage suitably disposed openings in the machine plate. A disadvantage of this is that the machine stand with its machine plate is also used in packaging machines that lack the insulator housing, so that for those applications the machine plate is unnecessarily wide, considering that for reasons of standardization it is always desirable to use the same machine plate. The openings for the threaded bolts of the insulator housing furthermore require additional production effort and expense. Especially if the machine plate has a plurality of regions of different heights, the production of the insulator housing and of the machine plate is also relatively complicated, since the height tolerances of the components must be relatively tight in order to limit the heights of the gaps.
The packaging machine according to the invention, particularly for filling and sealing containers containing liquid pharmaceuticals has an advantage that the production effort and expense for both the machine plate and the insulator housing are reduced, since the tolerances for the individual components can be less stringent. Furthermore, both for filling systems that use an insulator housing and filling systems without an insulator, one and the same relatively narrow machine plate can be used. Disposing the insulator housing according to the invention also makes monitoring simpler and enables easier replacement of the sealing element, since there is no longer any need to dismantle or remove the insulator housing.